This Week's Question: What was Your Biggest Trading Challenge and How Did You Overcome It?

Trading Discussion
1

This one’s for those with more experience trading and maybe something that can inspire those who are just starting out.

What was your biggest trading challenge when you were first starting to trade and how did you overcome it?

6 Likes
3

Understanding my losses was a huge challenge. Perhaps my first challenge was handling losses. My emotions used to sink so low…even dark. My mental state was attached to the market: up, down, up, down.

It was awful. I wanted to quit so often. I had two rules, and one of them was no quitting allowed. So, I just persevered.

And that led me to my next challenge. I needed to understand WHY I was losing.

I kept analyzing my losses, and chipping away at my strategy one detail after another. Eventually, I got to my current strategy.

Now, my remaining challenge is patience and execution.

5 Likes
4

It was, and is, emotional challenges that I finally rectified by learning to be a break-even profitable Zen trader. The Zen Trader book by Peter Castle was my saviour.

Nowadays, I send my positive probability trend trade robots out during the morning, close my computer trading account, and follow it up the next morning.

Win or lost - it is history, albeit I examine what went right or wrong.

Long gone are the days when I sat sweating at my computer watching price action moving up and down.

1 Like
5

I thought I already overcame my stop loss problem but I guess it’s still here. Although at least I only messed up once instead of many times unlike in the past. Overcoming it involves self-discipline. I wish it were easier but it really boils down to just that. At least for me.

1 Like
6

Sorting out and minimizing indicators to have a clear picture about the dynamic and meaning the formations, defining valid key levels of the market. Respecting support and level zones’ often choppy uncertain and MUST wait, don’t trade even for 1-2 days until it shows a sure breakout signal. It’s good and worth because you just “miss” a few loosing trades. (saves profit, eh.) Forgetting MA or SMA crossovers and rather see and use them as dynamic support/resistance levels.

2 Likes
7

When I was first starting to trade, my biggest challenge was understanding all of the different technical indicators and charting patterns. I had to spend a lot of time reading and studying before I finally began to understand what all of the different indicators meant. Once I understood the indicators, I was able to develop a simple trading strategy that I could use to make consistent profits. which is momentum.

1 Like
8

Please can you send the zen pdf to me​:pray::pray:

9

Google it. The Zen Trader by Peter Castle. It is a book that can be obtained from Amazon. As far as I know there is no PDF.

1 Like
10

Forcing my opinion in the markets was my issue in the past recent weeks. I ended up overtrade. Account was bleeding. Just like what other people say died by a thousand paper cuts. Haha.

Ways to overcome:

  1. Limit how many time you can enter a position in the markets. Mine is 2 retries and if I still lose then I stop. Shut down computer and go to sleep.

  2. I also use in % drawdown. I never wanted to lose more than 1% in a day.

  3. If in case 1 & 2 doesn’t work, I will do a reflection with myself especially on the weekend. How to improve my trading skills in general. Reflection every weekend is a must in my opinion because otherwise you wouldn’t be able to learn from your mistakes.

3 Likes
11

Yes! This is huge! Checking my mistakes on the weekend was super helpful, and understanding the mistakes, too. Look at the mistakes, and count them. I noticed I repeated the same 3 or 4 mistakes over and over. So, if I was wrong 20 times, it wasn’t 20 different mistakes, it was just a few that I kept repeating.

I would keep studying charts and making small adjustments every week. It’s a long, hard process, but very eye-opening.

1 Like
12

News trading.

I used to see these movies and tv series where the pro traders and the big guys watch mainstream finance channels all the time. I thought they were making decisions based on those.

I now know that pretty much anything you see in the mainstream media is old news, and you are pretty much late to react to it. They are not leading indicators, a lot of them are either coincidence or delayed indicators. So I started to look for data instead of TV broadcasts.